


a place to get lost in

by sodapeach



Category: VICTON (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bad Flirting, Gen, M/M, kinda weird but me too, no plot just vibes, weird fics are part of a well-balanced diet and dinner is served
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28060752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodapeach/pseuds/sodapeach
Summary: Byungchan gets swept away by the atmosphere of a strange little bar.
Relationships: Choi Byungchan/Do Hanse
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35
Collections: VICFEST®—round two!





	a place to get lost in

**Author's Note:**

> #013: “I think I want to marry you.”  
> “You don’t even know my name.”  
> “So?”

He’s never been here before, he thinks. 

The bar is just a hole in the wall— old, dirty and rife with the deep-set stench of an old man’s bourbon, and he thinks he’s into it. It reminds him of a place that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and stirs his insides in a way that should feel like a warning, but instead he wants to go in deeper into the bowels where the lights flicker hauntingly and smoke fills the air like a promise.  _ You will get lost here. _

When he walks in, it isn’t necessarily intentional. If anyone were to ask, like, if someone were to stop him on the side of the street and shove a microphone in his face for one of those candid junk interviews expecting a drop of wisdom, they would be terribly disappointed because the truth was the reason Byungchan went inside in the first place was that he was thirsty and this looked like a lovely place to get something to drink.

He was kind of right.

Soon the feeling of being stuck between this way and that disappears, and he sees it for what it truly is: a place to get lost in.

Most of the patrons already there are much older than him.  _ Much  _ older. And it’s sad, he thinks, that they seem to be so tired and so unaffected because he very much feels alive in a trapped between two worlds kind of way. Maybe he’s different. Maybe he’s special. He exhales sharply, a laugh hidden by the sound of glasses clinking together and a jukebox wedged in the corner playing something sad, diluted through a broken speaker. Having a big imagination sucks sometimes.

Once he comes to his senses he remembers why he came inside in the first place. His throat is dry, and there’s a weird sour taste in his mouth for no other reason than that he forgot his water bottle at home when he left for work this morning and for some reason the vending machines at the office only sell those little bottles of milk. At least he got in his monthly dose of calcium, he decides, but the dairy that still coats his tongue has become a nuisance that he must get rid of. If only there was a place around here for a guy to get something to drink.

Oh right.

Byungchan has been to a few clubs before. He’s not the baby faced boy scout he used to be. He has, on occasion, turned up, but he’s never been to one of these kinds of places before. There’s no crowd to climb over to get to the bar, and it’s quiet enough that he doesn’t have to shout his order and pray to Bacchus that the person behind the counter won’t accidentally charge bottle service to his credit card (again). 

Actually, it’s quiet enough that he finds himself extra cautious about the noise he makes like if he so much as scuffs his shoes on the floor, the illusion will shatter and everyone else will snap out of their own comfortable dazes and come after him like ghouls in the shadows. He shudders. Maybe he shouldn’t think so much on an empty stomach.

He finds his way to the bar with the thought of ordering something that doesn’t taste like milk, but if he had an idea three seconds ago, it’s gone now because the moment he sets his eyes on the bartender, he forgets what he came here for in the first place.

He’s shorter than him, unsurprisingly. Byungchan is used to towering over people, and it’s done a number to his posture over the years, always craning over to make himself seem smaller, but for some reason this person’s presence is so overwhelming that Byungchan feels like he’s staring up at him this time instead. 

The bartender doesn’t look at him so if he notices that Byungchan is staring, he’s got one hell of a poker face. He focuses on cleaning up a smudge on the bar that Byungchan doesn’t see so Byungchan takes a moment to focus on him.

Straight black hair cascades around his face and curls up at the ends near his shoulders, and although his features aren’t sharp, they still feel like they would nip him at the touch. He’s wearing a clean white button up shirt with the sleeves pushed up probably out of habit, but in his idle comfort, he’s revealed the solid black tattoos snaking around his arms. He looks like a devil in the best way, and Byungchan wonders if he keeps a bottle of poison or something wicked on the top shelf next to the vodka.

“Can I get you something,” he asks, and it’s a jarring, almost inhuman sound. Byungchan jolts and looks around, unsure who this illusion is talking to, but Byungchan is the only person standing there. He’s the only person out of place. He’s the only person who needs something.

The bartender waits with a hint of impatience as Byungchan realizes he’s talking to him. “Oh!”

He walks closer to the bar, but he doesn’t take a seat on any of the stools, and instead leans forward, careful not to let his voice carry and disturb the other customers. “Could I get something to drink?”

A faint smirk ghosts his lips, and Byungchan doesn’t need to be told that if they were anywhere or anyone else, he would have laughed at him. “You’re not a kid are you?”

“Of course not,” he frowns. He pulls back one of the stools and climbs over it to make a point, but he ends up looking more like a disjointed giraffe than a fully grown man capable and allowed to order something to drink at a bar, and if the painfully sudden self awareness doesn’t kill him, the heart stopping look on the bartender’s face when they’re finally on equal footing just might.

The look in his eye is mischievous and dark. He is Mephistopheles, and Byungchan wonders who that makes him. He shudders again. The bartender raises a brow, but he doesn’t say anything else, returning to his smudge on the bartop which apparently is much more important than Byungchan who is suddenly much thirstier than he was then minutes ago.

“Water,” he croaks. It’s a desperate and human request. He’s thirsty. He’s unsettled. He needs something to drink, and yet the bartender stops scrubbing just enough to look at him like he asked for a glass of earthworms. “... please.”

“We don’t sell water,” he says simply.

“Oh, right.” It’s a bar. Bars don’t sell water. Bars sometimes offer water  _ with  _ something, but bars do not sell water. Byungchan considers asking for a Coke or a Sprite instead, but when he opens his mouth to ask for the second safest option, the voice in his head asks him  _ what doesn’t taste like milk. _ “Lemon.”

“Lemon,” he asks, freezing in place like he didn’t hear him correctly, and Byungchan realizes he is now twice the idiot he was before. Bars don’t sell  _ lemons  _ either.

“Lemon… drop…,” he says intelligently. “Could I get a lemon drop?”

“Ah, sure thing.” 

The last lemon drop Byungchan had was at a club his friend wanted to go to for his birthday, and he can’t remember what it tasted like. He thinks he liked it, but more so, he likes the fact that it seems to be the right answer because the bartender is no longer questioning his right to be there. He passes with flying colors, and now he can relax.

He sets a martini glass on the counter before pouring everything he needs into a shaker, and it’s theatrical and effortless the way the cylinder twists and turns in his hands like magic. Byungchan watches carefully as alchemy happens right before his eyes, and as he pours, the way the light from the tungsten bulbs above their heads hits the stream makes it look like an ancient golden elixir with unknown consequences to the fool who drinks it.

He places the drink on a cocktail napkin across from Byungchan with a satisfied smile, and Byungchan offers a quiet thanks before bringing the glass to his lips. He takes a sip, anticipating something dangerous and foreign, but as expected, it tastes like a lemon drop.

It’s sweet with a slight sour note that hits the back of his tongue. It tastes like lemonade, and it tickles the back of his throat, and Byungchan is so comforted by this unthreatening little concoction that he forgets that it is, in fact, still  _ very  _ alcoholic.

And he forgets.

And he forgets. 

And he forgets.

The world spins around him, and Byungchan can’t wipe the stupid smile off his face. He’s happy and warm from the inside out, and he wants to be held, and the person across the bar from him who has now moved on from scrubbing at a scuff mark Byungchan couldn’t see to pulling empty bottles off of the shelf behind him looks like he might be someone warm to snuggle up to.

Byungchan has always been and will always be the baby. He can’t help it, and even if he suppresses his urges to whine and be someone who needs to be showered with love, there isn’t much he can do about it when he drinks which is why he does not like to drink too much when he’s around people who don’t know what he’s like and without someone like Seungwoo or Sejun to act as a buffer.

He leans forward onto his elbows and rests his chin in his hands, unrestrained and quite comfortable for someone propped up on a knobby bar stool. He knows he looks cute, but the bartender isn’t paying him any attention. It’s almost enough to make him pout, but then he remembers that this is a magic place between what is real and what is not. Of course someone who tends a place like this wouldn’t bat an eye at, well, Byungchan batting a lash. Byungchan is fascinated with him.

“I think I wanna marry you,” he slurs, his cheeks too pink and round for someone bold enough to confess his feelings to Hermes himself.

“You don’t even know my name,” he says without much consideration, his back still facing Byungchan. He’s in the position to receive dozens of offers a night so of course he wouldn’t react, but Byungchan can’t help but feel dejected.

“So,” he pouts, slumping over before he slides his glass across the counter towards the edge because it’s empty, and he’s still thirsty, he thinks.

He turns around and takes his glass away before bending down and grabbing what looks like a scotch glass, if Byungchan knows anything about what drinks are supposed to go in what. He takes it over to one of the taps on the wall and fills it with a clear liquid. The others are labeled with different draft beers Byungchan recognizes from the sale signs in convenience store windows, but this one is the most mysterious of them all. 

He places the glass in front of Byungchan who raises his eyebrow in response. He didn’t order this, and he definitely isn’t paying for something he doesn’t want even if the bartender is someone he likes to look at. He wipes his hands on his cloth and waits for Byungchan to accept the offering, and now Byungchan is torn between sticking to his own convictions and not being  _ rude _ . He gives in to the pressure and drinks, and the taste of it, or lack thereof, is quite jarring.

Water. He gave him water.

“Don’t you want to know my name,” he asks, returning to his work now satisfied that Byungchan accepted the drink without much of a fuss. So he’s been cut off. Embarrassing, but probably necessary.

“Not really,” Byungchan sighs. He brings the glass to his lips like a bored cat and drinks and pretends like it doesn’t taste like pool water, washing the illusion of the place away with every metallic drop. “I’d rather call you Aristaeus.”

The bartender looks over his shoulder and makes a face. “The God of Bee-Keeping?”

“Among other things.”

And he laughs and shakes his head, and a warmth spreads deep inside Byungchan’s stomach, encouraging him to try again, but it’ll be his last try because he’s not a creep. Byungchan hums, and he listens, finally paying attention.

“I think I’d like to call you Caerus,” he says, confidence replacing the wistful tone from before.

“I don’t remember which one that is,” he says. “I’m not a high school mythology teacher.”

This time it’s Byungchan’s turn to laugh. No, no he isn’t, but neither is he. Now he wonders what kind of impression he’s left on him, and if perhaps he walked in wearing the mantle of the mysterious stranger and didn’t even realize it.

“Caerus,” he starts, looking down at his now empty glass of water. “You could say, would be the God of Opportunity.” 

He shakes his head, not nearly as impressed as Byungchan thought he would have been, and takes the glass back before filling it up again from the tap that Byungchan now knows is designated for water.

He pushes it back towards him for Byungchan to drink more, and Byungchan frowns like a petulant child being told to eat his vegetables.

He reaches under the bar for something Byungchan can’t see and returns with Byungchan’s credit card tucked between his fingers, holding it up in the air like he could turn it into a puff of smoke. He extends it towards him, but before Byungchan can grab his own card to leave, he snatches it back.

“You didn’t drive here, did you? Do I need to call you a cab?”

“No,” he sighs and stands up. His backside is numb from sitting on such an uncomfortable stool, and his legs are a little wobbly from the drinks, but other than that, he’s good to go. “I live right down the street.”

“Have to ask,” he says simply and returns Byungchan’s card to him. 

Byungchan slips it back into his wallet and tries to do quick bar math in his head to guess how much he spent, but he can’t remember how many drinks he had, having been too busy day dreaming about long passages hidden behind secret doors to keep count. He curses his imagination again.

He looks around, and the illusion is now replaced with the stale scent of cigarettes mixed with the uncomfortable sensation of the bottom of his shoes sticking to the floor and the murmur of real, normal people talking amongst themselves. He thinks about his parents coming to a place like this and cringes, but they’d probably like it more this way.

Now that he’s sobered up a bit, both literally and figuratively, he feels a little ridiculous for getting so swept up in his own day dreams so intensely. He can’t wait to get out of there.

He turns to the bartender who has already cleaned up his space and decides to apologize for acting the way he did. “Listen, I’m sorry I–.”

“Hanse,” he says. “Not as interesting as the last few names you tried, but it’s what my mom gave me so I like it.”

“Hanse,” he repeats, committing it to memory. It’s real without an ounce of myth, but it feels just as mysterious as the others. “Sorry for–.”

“The next time you come back, let me help you pick out something to drink. I mean a lemon drop is great, but it’s…,” he tisks.

“Who said I’m coming back,” he raises an eyebrow, choosing to ignore the fact that Hanse just insulted his drink order.

He hums and shrugs. ”I thought you might.”

Byungchan squints, seeing the flicker of nerves on his face unlike the indifferent man from before. “Are you saying you want me to? I guess my proposals are pretty hard to turn down.”

Hanse laughs and slings his rag over his shoulder. “What can I say, I’m a bit of an opportunist.”

Byungchan shakes his head and turns to leave before Hanse says something that nails his feet to the floor.

“Besides, you’re the first living person I’ve ever seen walk in here, and I can’t help but think that means you’ll have to.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t know how to end this so I decided to go ????? with it. Thank you so much for reading!!!


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